The Ls at EY Law just keep coming.
The legal business at EY UK has just lost eleven people — among them four partners — to the London office of American law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth. MURICA!
Since the Legal Services Act in 2007 that allowed for non-lawyer ownership in law practices, Big 4 firms across the pond have been trying to create legal teams to rival the real lawyers in England and Wales. It hasn’t been going so great for EY Law.
Like every other service line in the global business, EY Law had hoped that the split of audit and consulting businesses (a.k.a. Project Everest) would be a huge boon to their pockets. The idea was that eliminating pesky audit independence rules would let them leverage existing relationships with audit clients to find new ways to invoice them for services.
Let’s revisit this Forbes article from 2022 discussing the opportunities Project Everest could open up for EY’s legal business worldwide: Will EY Law Change The Legal Delivery Paradigm?
The two-pronged structural transition will unlock several opportunities for EY Law and the advisory business of which it is a part. Separation from the audit business will remove independence restrictions that have prevented it from performing legal work for audit clients. This expands EY law’s market by about 20%, its share of Global 2000 audits. A substantially expanded market will justify greater investment to scale existing services more quickly and to develop new offerings useful to customers. Independence from audit restrictions will also reduce the substantial administrative burden on EY and, sometimes, its clients.
The spin-off will also allow EY Law to develop relationships with audit clients. This will open up partnering arrangements that produce new products and services helpful to customers. For example, EY Law can soon engage with several leading technology companies it audits. The list includes Google, Amazon, and Apple. EY already has a deep partnership with Microsoft, and its ability to expand its tech ties will open the door to new services, products, and opportunities.
Prior to Everest falling apart in April of 2023, EY Law wanted to grow their practice from 200 lawyers to 1,000. What actually happened is Everest burned to the ground and they’ve been losing people ever since. Both through quitting and layoffs.
In 2018, EY bought a practice called Riverview Law. By 2023, they closed the entire thing down and let the Riverview people go. Earlier this year, Managing Partner for Financial Services Law Chris Price, a 20-year veteran of EY, left for Alvarez & Marshal. His EY profile is still active and includes a quote that we hope he used in his resignation letter:
He apparently saw an opportunity to live a better life at one of the top professional services firms in the world (A&M currently ranks #3 on Vault’s Top 50 Consulting Firms in North America list).
It is now rumored that EY is mulling over a “joint venture” with a multinational law firm.
